Jack Paar

Starting his “Tonight Show” hosting tenure Monday, Jimmy Fallon proved he can snag A-listers and, in the early going, ratings. The numbers that came out Tuesday showed him crushing the competition, at least for now.

But his moments of real, almost awkward humility during a scattershot hour of television made you wonder if he will rise to the occasion of taking over one of television’s most storied franchises or be stifled by it.

Welcoming guests Will Smith and U2 — and starting 30 minutes later than the show’s usual time because of NBC’s Winter Olympics coverage — Fallon carefully introduced himself to the older folks who were,...

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Starting his “Tonight Show” hosting tenure Monday, Jimmy Fallon proved he can snag A-listers and, in the early going, ratings. The numbers that came out Tuesday showed him crushing the competition, at least for now.
But his moments of real,...

NEW YORK — Outside Studio 6B at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the once and future home of "The Tonight Show," the smell of fresh paint and sawdust fills the air. Visitors to one of the last tapings of "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" are led...

As "The Tonight Show" moves from its longtime Burbank home to New York City, where it originally debuted, 164 staffers will be laid off, an NBC spokesman confirmed on Friday.
The layoffs, which were first reported in the Burbank Leader, involve...

Fifty years ago next Sunday, on Feb. 9, 1964, via "The Ed Sullivan Show," America met the Beatles.
It was not the group's first appearance on American television. CBS News had reported, dismissively, on British "Beatlemania," and Jack...

This post has been updated. See note below for details.
The connection between the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the eruption of Beatlemania in the U.S. a little more than two months later when the group showed up on “The Ed Sullivan...

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Margaret Pellegrini, one of the last of the 124 little people who played Munchkins in the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz," died Wednesday at her Glendale, Ariz., home. She was 89.
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Bob Hope was the wisecracker. Milton Berle was a clown. George Burns and Gracie Allen were farceurs of domestic life. And Jack Benny was the "Everyman" comedian.
For nearly half-a-century, Benny kept audiences in stitches with his alter-ego...